Epizoo - the performance

"Epizoo" by Marcel.Lí Antúnez Roca performed during DEAF95.

Marcel.Lí Antúnez Roca: Epizoo; photo: Jan Sprij

24

Nov 1995

22:00 to
23:55

location:
Nighttown

A bizarre mixture of performance and installation. That is the interactive work Epizoo with which artist Marcel.Lí Antúnez Roca submits himself to the whims of the audience. Pneumatically movable mechanisms are connected to nose, mouth, ears, glutea and pectora, and members of the audience are invited to manipulate these mechanisms and the graphic animation projected on the wall via a touch-screen computer interface. Antúnez Roca, founder of La Fura dels Baus, is concerned with more than a simple shock effect: It creates an ethical dilemma, because you are manipulating a human being and actually causing pain. In Mexico a couple of people turned off the computer, because they disapproved so strongly. I am not a sadomasochist. There are more important issues at work: the depersonalisation of human relationships, the blurred boundary between sex and power, and the use of computers as instruments of control.